TEN thousand vehicles a day are thundering through a quiet village - because it is on a sat nav route to a busy airport.

And with 2.2million cars now using the high-tech guidance system it is not the only hamlet in Britain to suffer.

The problem arises because the devices will calculate the shortest distance from A to B regardless of whether it's motorway or single-track lane.

So, Barrow Gurney in Somerset has become jammed-up since it was plotted as the quickest way to Bristol airport. The council now wants it taken off digital maps.

And in Devon, farmer Chris Hayter, who lives in once-sleepy Haccombe, gets trucks powering through his yard. He said: "We now get lorries, vans and cars up here all the time. They follow their sat nav directions from Newton Abbot to Torquay and it takes them right through my farm."

Bradpole, Dorset, has jams as lorries fail to make it along its single-file road. Residents' association chairman Simon Williams said: "It's ridiculous. They stick these in salesmen's cars, vans and lorries. They don't know the road and if you follow them they are an absolute nuisance."

Villagers in Birch Green, Essex, used to look on bemused as drivers were sent down a private track by their sat navs and forced to turn back. But now they are just fed up.

The devices, which can cost as little as #200, are fitted as standard to a fifth of new cars.

Sat-nav seller TomTom said it gets 100 complaints a week from drivers sent the wrong way.

Gavin Jackman, of Ordnance Survey, said: "Drivers can get routed down smaller roads because the mathematical calculation shows which route is the shortest journey even if they are unclassified roads."